RUSSIA: THE COUNTRY OF EXTREMES.*
ENGLISHMEN have good reason to be grateful to any writer who can help them to understand Russia better. They have learned from experience in two opposite directions how closely their interests are associated with hers. From 1853 to 1907 British policy in Europe and Asia was largely shaped by distrust of Russia. From 1907 till the present time it has been almost revolutionized by the understanding between the two Govern- ments arrived at in that year. Unfortunately, to know Russia is not, for Englishmen, an easy process. To them intellectual Russia is for the most part identical with revolu- tionary Russia, and, though descriptions of the objects and methods of the Government coming from such a quarter can seldom merit unquestioning acceptance, they form the staple of the books provided for English readers. Mme. Jarintzoffs volume certainly belongs to this class. She is not intentionally unfair, but her attitude towards the Revolution is one of consistent and admiring sympathy. Its heroes and heroines are not even excused for their choice of bombs as the only means of getting their views accepted. They are described as commanding respect, not forgiveness. The chapter which deals with the murder of Alexander U. is a fair example of this temper. The fate of the Tsar to whom the serfs owed their emancipation might have been thought to deserve a passing word of pity. But it is only treated as the natural result of his disregard of the "decisive ulti- matum" placed before him, some two months earlier, by the Party of the Will of the People. The men who threw the • Russia the Country of Extremes. By Madame Jarintaolf. Leadoas Sadgwick and Jackson. gds. net.j •
bombs were the instruments of a man and a woman, Andrei Jeliabov and Sophia Perovskaya. Jeliabov combined "a par- ticularly gifted nature" with "a bright, attractive, and powerful personality." He had been arrested two days before "the historic event" for attempting some sixteen months earlier to blow up the Imperial train. About ten days before the assassination he called for volunteers to execute the death sentence. Forty-seven people answered to the call, and Jeliabov picked out four of them. Two of these remained unknown, as their bombs were not needed; the third was killed by the bomb that he launched against the Emperor; Ryssakov, the fourth, who threw the first bomb, was a student of nineteen. Owing to the arrest of Jeliabov on February 27th, the arrangement of the details fell to Sophia Perovskaya, and two days later the plan was carried out Sophia waited near the Palace where the Tsar had been lunching to see which route he would take on leaving. When he turned along the Catherine Canal she "took out her pocket-handkerchief and blew her nose." At this signal the two men who held the bombs hurried to the canal, while she walked up the oppo- site bank and watched the result. Mme. Jarintzoff describes the attitude of public opinion on the executions which fol- lowed as "curious," apparently because "disapproval of the event itself" was combined with "sympathy and compassion, mingled with respect for those who carried it out." In her own ease, the latter emotions are not alloyed by any such illogical compromise.
The view here taken of terrorist methods incapacitates a writer from passing a fair judgment on acts of the Government against which they are directed. The Russian Executive may be as brutal and as tyrannical as hIme. Jatintzoff describes it. But scrupulous care in their choice of weapons is not to be expected from men who are fighting an enemy to whom no expedient is unlawful. Probably many of the steps taken by the Russian Government in its conflict with Anarchism are not the most effectual, even for their own purpose. But when a bomb may explode at your feet at any moment it is difficult to weigh with calmness the relative merits of rival policies. A society which is fighting for very life cannot be judged by the rules ordinarily applicable to civilized communities. Sophia Perovskaya, lime. Jarintzoff tells us, "was one of those whose gifted nature allows them to manage complicated situations as if they were the most ordinary affairs of ordinary life, and to remain genuinely simple and cheerful at the same time." But simplicity and cheerfulness cease to be virtues when they are associated with assassination ; or, if this is too harsh a statement for the author of Russia : the Country of _Extremes, she can hardly wonder that it is one that appeals to the Imperial officials. Nor is an admirer of terrorist methods likely to take an unbiassed view of any part of the system to the destruction of which they are directed. Mme. Jarinizoff quotes from Mr. Maurice Baring the statement; "Au long as there is a Russian nation there will he a Russian religion at the core of it," and adds; "I hope not ! The prospect of the growth of Russia would be too hopeless if Russian religion remained what it is now." In justification of this hope ahe reprints from the Hibbert Journal an article of her own on " Russian Piety and the Clergy." It may be taken for certain that a great Church like the Russian will furnish an observer who stands altogether outside all Churches with ample occa- sions for criticism, and we have been surprised to find that the chief faults alleged against the " white " or secular clergy are their poverty—in the villages they are " actually harassed by want as much as the peasants themselves "—and their unwillingness to interfere with their parishioners. But that this latter error has no very serious consequences to religion may be &erred from the following description of a Russian peasant's behaviour in church :—
"He looks after his soul for himself, and the church forms only a poetical framework to his own thoughts. . . Every one stands for hours in the Russian churches—there are no seats in them and one can easily see how individual are the prayers of the people as they kneel and cross themselves, and touch the floor with their foreheads, in all sincerity and simplicity of mind, whenever their spontaneous prayer prompts them to do so."
When Mine. jarintzoff wrote on p. 132 that "the prospect of the growth of Russia would be too hopeless if Russian religion remained what it is now," ahe must surely have forgotten what she had previously written on p. 88.
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